Artificial lures are commonly used to catch fish, particularly in sport and recreational fishing. In order to catch fish which themselves prey upon other fish, it is desirable to use a lure which includes an appropriate bait fish. While live bait can be used for this purpose, this creates numerous practical difficulties: it is necessary to obtain live bait, mount it appropriately, and check regularly that it is still alive. In addition, live bait can only be trolled effectively at relatively low speeds.
Many difficulties in using live bait can be solved by using dead bait, but new difficulties arise. To be an effective lure, the dead bait must sufficiently resemble live bait in appearance and disposition for it to be recognised as desirable prey by a predator fish. While a number of fishing lures used for mounting dead bait have been developed, these are generally either complex to make, difficult to use, insufficiently lifelike or have some combination of these faults. Examples of prior art fishing lures for dead bait trolling are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,518,593, 3,645,031, 4,067,135, 4,791,751, 5,177,895, 5,893,232, 6,658,785 and 7,257,923.
It is therefore desirable to provide a fishing lure for mounting dead bait for trolling which addresses these shortcomings of the prior art.